Big George: "Joe Louis Best Heavyweight Ever!"

One thing certain..Joe Louis was a damned fine human being. Treated terribly by the IRS after he helped tremendously with the war effort. Marciano helped him financially, if I recall. Marciano had tremendous respect and fondness for Joe.

 

George sat across the table a few years ago & said exactly the same thing about Lennox Lewis. George is a joker says what the thinks people like to hear

 

I'm sure Foreman holds some bias with that statement given the vitriol he had for ALi for many years throughout the 70's. He resented the guy for a couple reasons, so he may be making this statement out of spite.

That being said, it's not like he's going out on a limb by picking Louis. Joe has a strong case as the greatest HW ever aside from Ali.

 

Louis tho not a big hw, threw combos like a prime SRR that would hurt and blast thru any heavyweights in history, including the water buffaloe they call "superheavyweights" today. Who do y'all think blasted out Wlad? Who dropped Fury on his ass? Who made Vitali quit? They weren't "superheavyweights", that's for sure. Louis was no nonsense, he spoke with his fists. He beat dozens of bums, but beat great fighters too.

 

Foreman is Bitter....the only one Man TKOd Foreman in over 70 Fights...and that was the Greatest Muhammad Ali.....Don't think George ever really got over that fact.!!!!

 

I definitely take with Foreman says with a grain of salt.

He said in an interview that in his prime, Lennox would not have lasted 2 rounds with him. Then Lewis beats Tyson, who was a mere 14 years past his peak, and says "Lewis is the greatest heavyweight ever". I think he said that when he was in the UK so maybe he was just trying to score some points there and sell some more grills.

Foreman did not complain about the Holyfield decision, naturally, because Holyfield was a clear winner. Then he claims in his autobiography that he thinks he won.

He had all these excuses for losing to Ali. Then he said he learned to live with the loss and didn't have any excuses. Then his autobiography, which was released in the 1990s, more than 20 years after the fight, he has tons of excuses. My favorite is the "I was about to knock Ali out but I got distracted by my friend in the audience who betrayed me by rooting for Ali...By the time I snapped out of it, Ali had recovered". So he's a world class athlete, the friggin heavyweight champion of the world, and manages to lose focus enough to notice that a member of the audience is rooting for his opponent. Boxers, especially punchers, are looking for that moment they hurt their opponent, so they can go for the finish. Yet when this time came, he was too busy looking at the audience instead of going for the kill, and then got his feelings hurt because he looked at the crowd long enough to notice that his friend was not only in the crowd, but rooting for his opponent LOL.

Foreman still kept saying he accepted the loss, and gave a great interview in 2004 for The Ring's 30th anniversary issue of the fight. Made no excuses, gave Ali credit, said the issue with the German shepards wasn't true, said the fans were nice to him, that Ali really hurt him with a good shot and it wasn't just fatigue.

Then a couple years later he goes back to saying he was drugged.

He can be a pretty entertaining person but I don't take much of what he says seriously. He's all over the place

 

Lol foreman a funny dude

 

For me

1. Ali
2. Liston
3. Louis
4. Holmes
5. Foreman

Best Heavyweights then some others

 

Rocky Marciano surely did. :smoke

Also, Mike Tyson said that he would beat Joe Louis but lose to Ali (perhaps too much respect for Ali?).

 

He said that during a comedy bit. :roll:

In that same bit he says he would lose to Balboa from Rocky IV and that he gives himself 'a pretty good' chance of defeating Bobby DeNiro when he was training in the sport for his role in Raging Bull..